May 22, 2008

May 16: AngryRenter.com appears to be a website that is against any type of mortgage "bailout," however, the site is not run or was even set up by "angry renters," rather, it is the product of conservative advocates Steve Forbes and Dick Armey: two homeowners.
The site is a front for a political agenda that seeps from their other conservative website, FreedomWorks.com. AngryRenter.com's role as a politically conservative arm is to reach into the minds of renters and sell the impression that homeowners in underwater mortgages, whose situation is affecting homeowners in quality, prime mortgages (via depreciating housing markets, rising HOA fees, etc.), should not be bailed out by the government (i.e. taxpayer money) -- that the marketplace should "naturally" correct itself. The hubristic website does not consider the negative ramifications (overall economic hardship) of assuming the market doesn't corrects itself anytime soon....
The Wall Street Journal uncovered this clandestine operation earlier today.

Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated.
Once he arrived home from the Hennepin County Courthouse, where he’d been served a gross misdemeanor for spray-painting the interior of a campus elevator, the lanky, wavy-haired University of Minnesota sophomore flipped open his phone and checked his messages. He was greeted by a voice he recognized immediately. It belonged to U of M Police Sgt. Erik Swanson, the officer to whom Carroll had turned himself in just three weeks earlier. When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble.
Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.
“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”
What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

May 20, 2008

Former world chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has been on the receiving end of an unconventional prank launched by his political foes - one that draws its inspiration from the virtual world of Second Life.
Kasparov was attending a weekend meeting of a coalition of opposition groups which had assembled in Moscow to launch a symbolic alternative parliament. As he was addressing the gathering of more than 500 delegates, he was buzzed by a remote-controlled flying phallus.
The device - which appeared to be a modified twin-rotor toy helicopter - caused an sudden commotion with security guards springing to attention.